Founded by David Nolan and several of his colleagues, the LP has grown to considerable size, reaching more than 4 million votes in the 2016 presidential election, and is the first party to have a female candidate on its presidential ticket receive an electoral vote. In 2006, over 13,400,000 votes were cast for Libertarian candidates.

The LP runs on a grassroots Jeffersonian ideal where individuals take the stand. The party has people from all political breeds, and has many variations on it's main ideas, yet the major ideas hold true.

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Founding and Early Years

In 1971, the Committee to Form a Libertarian Party was established to determine if a new political party was needed, or if one of the existing political parties was suitable. It has been documented that Richard Nixon's 90 day price and wage freeze in August of that year was a deciding factor in the decision to form the LP.

On 11 December, the committee pulled the trigger, and the committee was replaced by the Libertarian Party. Notice was published in Reason Magazine[1] and possibly other places, which helped efforts to bootstrap the party going into its First National Convention.

While the Libertarian Party soon discovered the hard way how difficult it was to get on ballots, its presence on two states was adequate to attract the attention of an unhappy Republican elector, Roger MacBride, who gave the Hospers/Nathan ticket his vote, making Tonie Nathan the first woman and the first ethnic Jew to receive an electoral vote.